May 14 2018

Mani: Travels in the Southern Peleponnese by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Mani grew in the telling. Patrick Leigh Fermor meant it “to be a single chapter among many, each of them describing the stages and halts, the encounters, the background and the conclusions of a leisurely journey … through continental Greece and the islands.” He undertook the journey, “to pull together the strands of many previous travels and sojourns in all parts of Greece, for I had begun wandering about this country and living in various parts of it a few years before [World War II].” Combining understatement and insouciance as he will throughout the book, he adds, “The war did not interrupt these travels though for the time being it altered their scope and their purpose; and since then they have continued intermittently until this very minute of an early morning on a white terrace on the island of Hydra.” (all p. 5)

“All of Greece is absorbing and rewarding,” (p. 6) which tells the reader as much or more about the author as about Greece itself. Enthusiasm seems his natural mode; a published book of one of his correspondences is titled In Tearing Haste and I can see that as the closing in many letters, dashed off from here or there as he explored places, met people, discovered their pasts and presents, and filed away notes to charm multitudes of readers decades hence. “There is hardly a rock or a stream without a battle or a myth, a miracle or a peasant anecdote or a superstition; and talk and incident, nearly all of it odd or memorable, thicken round the traveller’s path at every step.” (p. 6) Considering his natural style and approach, a single volume encompassing all of Greece was clearly impossible. The 350 pages of Mani encompass a single peninsula in the Peleponnese, but this is no dry recounting of every nook and cranny. “Thus I could allow myself the luxury of long digressions, and, by attempting to involve the reader in them, aspire to sharing with him a far wider of Greek lands, both in space and time, than the brisker chronicle of a precise itinerary would have allowed. … there was now no need to furnish this free elbow-room with anything which had not filled me with interest, curiosity, pleasure or excitement.” And indeed he does.

The temporal dimension is particularly important, as Michael Gorra notes in his introduction to Mani. “In Leigh Fermor’s pages any account of the present begins a thousand years back, and to read him is to enter a mind that delights in bounding from moment to moment and century and century, a mind in which all times appear to exist at once. … [I]t’s instead as though they were each one indexed, and available for use.” (p. viii) Leigh Fermor sees the centuries that have shaped the settlements and the landscapes he travels, the ebb and flow not only of Greek power (both ancient and otherwise) but also Frankish, Venetian, Ottoman, and more, each leaving telltale evidence in building, names, technology, words, or local legend.

The second aim, both of this and other books to follow, is to situate and describe present-day Greeks of the mountains and the islands in relationship to their habitat and history; to seek them out in those regions where bad communications and remoteness have left this ancient relationship, comparatively speaking, undisturbed. In the towns and the more accessible plains many sides of life which had remained intact for centuries are being destroyed apace—indeed, a great deal has vanished since my own first visits to Greece. Ancient and celebrated sites are carefully preserved, but, between the butt of a Coca-cola bottle and the Iron Curtain, much that is previous and venerable, many living mementoes of Greece’s past are being hammered to powder. It seems worth while to observe and record some of these less famous aspects before the process is complete. (pp. 6–7)

In the end, he only managed one other book of similar depth about a Greek region, Roumeli: Travels in Northern Greece. What might have been takes nothing away from the amazing achievement of Mani in bringing an obscure region vividly to life. Leigh Fermor carries his learning lightly and leavens it with personal encounters.

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/14/mani-travels-in-the-southern-peleponnese-by-patrick-leigh-fermor/

May 14 2018

Batman: Nightwalker (DC Icons Series #2) by Marie Lu

As hoped, it was better than the first in the DC Icons series, Wonder Woman: Warbringer. Maybe that’s due in large part to the fact that Batman as a mortal character needs to have his origin updated for each leap in technological progress: it’s absurd to think that this iconic character, dependent as he is on gadgets and tech, could be anything less than hyper-modern, whereas to do the same to the ageless and essentially immortal Wonder Woman feels both unnecessary and insulting to her background (but since DC Comics doesn’t have a problem with it, who am I to complain? ::eye-roll::)

Which isn’t to say that Batman: Nightwalker doesn’t have issues of its own. It’s not particularly clever or ground-breaking — and it definitely hasn’t carved out a place for itself in the essential canon — but it’s an entertaining and not entirely unconvincing depiction of a pivotal chapter in a teenage Bruce Wayne’s life. My main problem was with the editing: I was more than happy to let a few weird mistakes go, but by the time this came along, I was grinding my teeth so hard that I had to bookmark the damn thing so I wouldn’t forget to quote it verbatim for this review:

“Half a flight ahead of him was [redacted], who seemed to move with a speed and agility that belied everyone else.”

Are you fucking kidding me?! Look, as an Asian-American first-generation immigrant, I get that the nuances of the English language can be hard, so I legit don’t hold it against Marie Lu (or any other author, no matter what background) to fuck that one up. But that a professional editor read through this and didn’t immediately red line that shit makes me want to scream in horror. I do not have the time or patience to go through the rest of the book again to pick out the other glaring mistakes, but I am aghast at the standards here. Also? My copy had an excerpt from the next novel, the Catwoman re-imagining, and oh my God, fuck you everyone involved. Elegant cat burglar Selina Kyle is a teenage cage fighter, like ayfkm? I get that it’s more palatable than being a young prostitute, as she was in canon (tho this also opens up a whole ‘nother can of worms about sex work and shame,) but oh fuck it, I give up, Catwoman in non-comics media has been a hot mess since Tim Burton fucking ruined her in his stupid movie. Yeah, I said it. I am grossed out by the association of gratuitous violence with the character, particularly in a YA setting, especially since it looks like it’s taking the place of voluntary, if transactional, sex. Definitely not reading the next book.

Anyway, if you can get over the basic editing errors in this volume, it’s a perfectly serviceable piece of entertainment that is recognizably Batman and not some appalling bastardization of the character.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/14/batman-nightwalker-dc-icons-series-2-by-marie-lu/

May 12 2018

The House of Government by Yuri Slezkine — Halftime Report

One of the unexpected pleasures of The House of Government is Yuri Slezkine’s occasional playful way with words. Given the subject matter, and particularly given Slezkine’s argument that Bolshevism can best be understood as a millennarian sect that gained control of the state, a reader would be forgiven for thinking that his prose would range from ardent to dry. My sense from reading the book, however, is that Slezkine was enjoying the writing, page by page, sentence by sentence. Nothing else can really account for his light touch and occasional exercise in drollery, sometimes where it is least expected. “The main selection criterion [for execution during the Red Terror of 1918] was class belonging, manifested (or not) in antigovernment actions and opinions. The main markers of class belonging were in the eye of the beheader.” (p. 159) In another passage whose page number I have misplaced, he writes of party activists putting the cart before the material preconditions necessary for it.

The virtues that I found in the book’s first chapters have continued through the halfway point; namely, thoroughness without belaboring the point, a desire to tell his story comprehensively if not completely (and the cast of characters of the book as it does exist points out the impossibility of telling the story completely), and an ability to show how the parts relate to the whole. Modern printing technology also helps the book greatly; a significant number of two-page spreads feature photos of people mentioned on the pages, reproductions of period art, or pictures of locations discussed in the text. All of these combine to give a richer, more immediate sense of the times that Slezkine describes. Chapter 9, “The Eternal House” covers the construction of the House of Government, and it is particularly rich with illustrations. These show the building in progress, plans of the whole and individual apartments, how it fit with planners’ concepts of transforming Moscow, and more. Chapter 10, “The New Tenants,” shows many of them. That chapter also contains an interesting digression into the theater that was built into the House, the company that was selected to reside there, and the hazardous interplay between art and politics that shaped creative life in the Soviet Union.

Living up to expectations, and worth the time required to read.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/12/the-house-of-government-by-yuri-slezkine-halftime-report/

May 12 2018

The Rig by Roger Levy

It’s been quite a while since I’ve taken this long to read a book (four days, to be precise, which is a total humble brag given that I’ve read 72 books in the past 4 months and 11 days.) Granted, The Rig clocks in at over 600 pages and since I had it in paperback — the better to enjoy that gorgeous cover — it was harder to binge read in the dark as I do with ebooks on my Paperwhite before I go to sleep. But ooh, what an intelligent, layered 600+ pages! Imagine a far future where humanity has abandoned a dying Earth to colonize a system of planets far less conducive to human health and happiness. This is the setting for the interwoven tales of two men who met as boys on the fanatically religious planet of Gehenna, and a plucky writer sent to interview two other men, a cop and an engineer, on the appropriately named planet of Bleak. As we follow these narratives, pieces slowly shift and slide into place to present us with an overarching picture that is as breathtaking as that cover. Some of these pieces are more obvious than others (Pireve, the origin of the cancer) but many more are unexpected enough to make even the most seen-it-all readers stop and say “Oh.”

At its heart, The Rig is a novel about faith that, in my opinion, does a much better job of looking for the divine in the stars of the future than most of the overtly religious science fiction out there. I really, really loved the ending even as I wanted much, much more from the climactic scene on the titular Rig. A lot of that has to do with The Question, which I think is at once an elegant concept and one that needs more explaining than Roger Levy gives us in this novel. Granted, it is entirely likely that this was done on purpose, to provoke readers to form their own thoughts regarding the issue (and if I get a chance to interview the author, hopefully, we’ll find out more!) But don’t mistake The Rig for a pious novel. The social media system known as AfterLife, which gives its subscribers a shot at resurrection via the votes of other subscribers, is presented as a completely viable alternative to goddery, as the holdover religions from Earth are known. The Rig thoughtfully explores the need for and forms of faith through fiction that is part space opera, part noir novel (I’m still mad about Delta) without ever sermonizing. It raises terrific questions of power, technology and omniscience in an atmosphere as perpetually unstable as a rig floating on a turbulent sea.

I also loved Mr Levy’s way with linguistic evolution, with the aforementioned “goddery” as just one example. “Putery” was the one awkward extrapolation, I felt, but I really appreciated the use of words like “threedy” and “flycykcle” that perfectly captured the way technological advances come to be just another part of language. And, of course, I am a sucker for a good, intelligent pun, with which The Rig is perfectly peppered.

Recommended if you want thought-provoking scifi that acknowledges human frailty while celebrating our resilience. I do hope he writes more on The Question (or perhaps the subject is explored in his previous books and I should go read those!)

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/12/the-rig-by-roger-levy/

May 11 2018

A Hero Born by Jin Yong

“The Chinese Lord of the Rings.” Or, as translator Anna Holmwood puts it in her introduction, “one of the world’s best-loved stories and one of its grandest epics, a series that can count its fans in the hundreds of millions. And yet this is the first time it has been published in English, despite making its appearance in a Hong Kong newspaper over half a century ago. … Generations of young readers have stayed up past their bedtimes, following Guo Jing and his descendants in their fight to regain the glories of the past…” (p. ix) The promise and the peril of A Hero Born are all right there in the description.

Holmwood sets the scene, “We begin in the year 1205, as the Song Empire has been pushed southwards out of its capital by the Jurchen Jin Empire. Meanwhile, the great Mongol commander Temujin, who will later become known as Genghis Khan, is gathering power and men out on the steppes.” (p. viii) Last year, I read a specialist collection of scholarly essays that also covered this period and was enthusiastic about the stories implied by even the smallest historical details. “The nativist-irredentist movement that acquired momentum in the late 1120s was led by the monk Myoch’ong, who was able to gain influence over the young king Injong by virtue of his thaumaturgic reputation,” is from history, but is the kind of story that would fit perfectly into the world of A Hero Born, the first of a prospective twelve translated volumes in the Legends of the Condor Heroes.

Indeed, A Hero Born is full of wandering monks, martial arts warriors, hidden princes, cunning soldiers, mysterious travelers, corrupt officials, and much more. The story sweeps from China’s south to the Mongolian steppes and back to the northern capital, known today as Beijing. It follows the coming of age of Guo Jing, whose life is shaped by the circumstances of his father’s death and by an encounter among different schools of martial artists when he is still in his mother’s womb. It ought to be an amazing and wonderful story, and for many millions of people it clearly is. I wasn’t one of them.

Part of the problem, I think, is that the book was first serialized in 1959. Although it was revised in 1976 and 2003, the book still felt dated in a way that was neither charming nor historically interesting. Fantasy storytelling has developed in the decades since, leaving A Hero Born a bit stranded in the twenty-first century. It’s new to the English-speaking world, but it’s also of its time, as if the first episodes of Doctor Who were expecting to compete for audiences’ favor with Game of Thrones or the Marvel movies. Yes, I can see why people love it, but no, it’s not the equal of the best of what today has to offer.

Another part is that I want greater depth and sophistication from what I read, even when I am reading just for fun. The book is all plot, and plot of the one thing after another variety. Consequences sometimes arise from characters’ choices, but essentially never from the characters’ nature. One of the longest narrative threads arise from a bet taken between an antagonist and a group of martial artists. It’s a clever way of solving the conflict between the two, but it’s also a terribly contrived way to drive the story. The characters do things that, on the surface, involve a lot of action, but there isn’t any depth to them. They go here, they go there, and they fight a lot.

One aspect that Jin does not stint on is descriptions of the fights. They were sometimes fun to read, and it was interesting to see what kind of inventive names he gave to the kung fu moves, but I did not find that their contribution to the story warranted the amount of space Jin gave them. I would have preferred to find out more about the settings, or to have the characters more fully developed.

I’m glad that the Condor Heroes are available in English, and particularly that younger readers will have a chance to take these stories to heart and make them their own. I may peek in on later volumes to see if Jin took them in the directions that I would enjoy reading about, and I will definitely leave A Hero Born lying around to see whether the next generation in my household discovers this beloved set of stories.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/11/a-hero-born-by-jin-yong/

May 02 2018

The Changeling by Victor LaValle

The fairy tales that we’re familiar with have spent centuries being smoothed down by retelling after retelling, retaining their magic despite the years and multiple minor tweaks because, as stories, they make sense to us. Some might argue that those minor tweaks Disney-fy the process, but I believe that they whittle away the things that we, as human beings, find implausible or unacceptable. There is a reason that it is never the venal siblings who are rewarded, that wit and courage trump power and wealth, and that goodness and love triumph in the end. Fairy tales make sense to our innate moral compasses.

The proven longevity of these narratives inspire each new generation to spin their own versions in hopes theirs too will join the slipstream of folk consciousness. Unfortunately, Victor LaValle’s The Changeling likely will not succeed in this as, despite the trappings of myth and the (clever) allusions to modernity, it relies too goddamn much on the main characters doing things that are either under-explained or fly directly in the face of everything you know about the character till then. Emma’s transition from doting mother to homicidal maniac is completely glossed over, which is a really weird oversight in a book that enjoys having its main character, Emma’s husband, Apollo, have exhaustive conversations with just about everybody. And there’s a crucial decision in Little Norway (>when he takes Emma back to the house where he just killed the homeowner and left the front door standing wide open, what the fuck?!) which makes not a lick of sense for his character, given how justifiably paranoid he is about the negative attention of white people and cops. But Mr LaValle needed it to happen in order to further the plot, which is some cheap ass writing right there (also? Gratuitous sex scene. Hard pass.)

And, crucially, I didn’t like Apollo. Or rather, I didn’t see him as the “good man” that the book was trying to portray him as. He’s a conflicted individual trying to do the best he can, but he treated Emma poorly, right from the incident with the red bracelet, IMO. I’m definitely of the camp (that Mr LaValle is aware enough of in the book to mention) who would view what he did as a total dick move. And again, it’s only towards the end that you get the idea that Emma’s decline came gradually and not just out of nowhere. I really, really hated how awful they were to each other, and wonder, especially after reading Everything I Never Told You, if this is some sort of thing Americans since the 70s or so have been raised to believe, that it’s okay (even funny! Fuck you, crappy sitcoms) to be casually cruel to your spouse because true love or something dumb.

Anyway, I really enjoyed The Ballad Of Black Tom but The Changeling just didn’t work for me despite the fact that the modernization aspect of it was impressively good. I neither believed in nor cared about that characters. And wtf was up with Apollo’s parents? There’s the bones of a good story there but Mr LaValle did an awful job of telling it. Literally, it was all tell from Lillian, not show. And, as a woman, I didn’t care for the overarching portrayal of women finding their own feminine mystical powers only after deep betrayal turns them into monsters (tho I guess this is progress after TBoBT erases Ms Suydam from the narrative altogether.) Still, I’ll look out for his next novel because there’s promise here, and I want Mr LaValle to succeed. He writes about modern fatherhood really well, and I absolutely support his mission to explore the African-American experience via fantasy and horror writing. I just want him to write better.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/02/the-changeling-by-victor-lavalle/

May 01 2018

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Of the later Discworld books, I like the ones about Tiffany Aching best because their stories arise from the characters and the natural interactions that flow from their natures as Pratchett has described them. Naturally there is the overarching theme of Tiffany growing up — and in Wintersmith her precociousness is easier for me to accept in an almost thirteen-year-old than it was in the much younger Tiffany of The Wee Free Men — and there is also a plot device to get the story rolling, but mostly Wintersmith is about he characters being who they are and becoming who they ought to be. Even the antagonist means well.

Tiffany has gone from her home area, the Chalk, up to the Lancre mountains to learn from the region’s witches by living with them and observing what they do, how they perform the role, how they relate to one another. A younger witch stays with an older one for a period, learning what she can, before moving on. Eventually, an older witch will pass away, opening up a cottage for one of the younger ones to take on and settle down more or less permanently. The witches perform medical and magical services for the people they live among, dispensing assistance and sometimes justice. The communities respect the witches and provide for them; the witches also visit one another quite a bit.

In those times when people hated witches, they were often accused of talking to their cats. Of course they talked to their cats. After three weeks without an intelligent conversation that wasn’t about cows, you’d talk to the wall. And that was an early sign of cackling.
“Cackling,” to a witch, didn’t just mean nasty laughter. It meant your mind drifting away from its anchor. It meant you losing your grip. It meant loneliness and hard work and responsibility and other people’s problems driving you crazy a little bit at a time until you thought it was normal to stop washing and wear a kettle on your head. It meant you thinking that the fact you knew more than anyone else in your village made you better than them. It meant thinking that right and wrong were negotiable. And, in the end, it meant you “going to the dark,” as the witches said. That was a bad road. At the end of that road were poisoned spinning-wheels and gingerbread cottages. (p. 20)

Continue reading

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/05/01/wintersmith-by-terry-pratchett/

Apr 30 2018

Snow by Night Volume 2: Dissolution by Eric Menge & Brittany Michel

Devoured this in one sitting. I’m a huge fan (and personal friend) of Eric Menge’s and I strongly believe that Dissolution builds on the terrific first volume to really immerse us in the fantasy world of Corthis. This book contains chapters 5 to 8 of the excellent webcomic, as well as five vignettes that give us more background and insight into our cast of characters. I especially enjoyed the art of S. Y. Lee in the Losing By Winning vignette, but I am a sucker for garden parties and pretty dresses. There’s also a wonderful sketchbook section with commentary, as well as maps, hilarious parody panels and a list of Kickstarter backers included.

In Dissolution, Snow-by-Night grows weary of her alliance with Blaise and Jassart, our gentleman thieves in the colonial frontier town of Sherbourg (based loosely on colonial Quebec City.) Jassart, however, has grown feelings for the manitou, to the alarm of Blaise and his belle, Mathilde. While Mathilde is willing to help Jassart continue on his quest to help Snow-by-Night find her heart, Blaise has other plans that may wreck their thieving crew for good.

It was fascinating to see how the light-hearted hijinks of the first book took a decidedly darker turn here, as Blaise began to show more of his true colors (how Mathilde puts up with him, I don’t know.) And while I loved reading more of our human cast, especially the badass Vivienne, the best scenes belonged to the supernatural elements of our story. I really, really want to read more but my antipathy to reading comics electronically (as detailed in my review of the first volume here) makes it so I’ll just have to wait impatiently for the physical publication of Volume III. Is there a Kickstarter where I can help make this happen faster? If I can persuade Eric to do an interview here, perhaps we’ll find out together!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/30/snow-by-night-volume-2-dissolution-by-eric-menge-brittany-michel/

Apr 30 2018

Snow by Night Volume 1: Calcination by Eric Menge & Brittany Michel

Several things to admit: first, I’m friends with the creators of this excellent webcomic. Despite this friendship, and my knowledge that Eric Menge is a brilliant writer, I’m absolutely wretched at keeping up with webcomics as they publish, even his. I get sidetracked and forget to check in, and while I’m not one of those “real book” elitists, there’s just something missing to me when I read a comic electronically instead of in physical format. Maybe it has to do with how I feel there aren’t any really good electronic readers for comics, the kind that let you breeze through a story yet adjust your viewing so you can drill down into the art without straining your eyesight or fiddling with unwieldy controls. So when Eric gave me the first two books in his series, I was absolutely delighted to be able to catch up with his rich fantasy world of Corthis.

Set primarily in a land based on French Canada, the first volume of Snow By Night follows the exploits of a pair of master thieves (or rooks, in this world’s parlance) who are bewildered by a thief who keeps beating them to their spoils. Worse, said thief is robbing those who pay Jassart and Blaise for the privilege of protection. Our dynamic duo sets a trap for this thief, and are stunned to discover that she’s really a manitou named Snow By Night, who has come to the mortal world in search of her heart.

This volume contains the first four chapters of the story (roughly akin to comic book issues) along with five shorter vignettes that serve to illuminate the background of the setting and the minor characters. It also includes some terrific maps, as well as sketches of the characters, complete with commentary on their designs, and bonus artwork. I really enjoyed the amount of thought Brittany Michel put into her art, as well as the behind the scenes look into what goes into creating this comic.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the main draw of Snow By Night for me is Eric’s excellent writing. It takes skill to write a story of rogues and magic that is at once humorous and suspenseful, and on top of this (or perhaps below, as its foundation,) Eric has created a wholly original setting, with its own mythologies and linguistics that are that much more striking for being based off of our own. The website provides further insight via its Almanac section, but is it terrible that I’m holding out till more physical volumes are published? Review of Vol II coming very soon!

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/30/snow-by-night-volume-1-calcination-by-eric-menge-brittany-michel/

Apr 28 2018

Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng

What an incredibly annoying book.

Imagine, if you will, a family where the parents ignore two of their children but place all their hopes and dreams and crushing projections on the one daughter who winds up dead soon after her sixteenth birthday, after which the parents learn to become better parents, and maybe better partners to each other? Lydia Lee essentially gets refrigerated so her parents can become better people. It’s hella stupid. Honestly, a lot of the things the members of the Lee family do in this book are hella stupid, but it’s forgivable in the children: they’re kids, after all. Their feelings are harder to control and they make stupid assumptions about the world and each other. And I get that lots of adults never really grow beyond this adolescent stage of poor decision-making but damn, for this book to need the death of a beloved daughter to be the catalyst for that growth feels icky. Everything I Never Told You doesn’t read like the portrait of a family struggling to heal, it’s honestly more of a grotesque exercise in “take away the thing the parents love and maybe they’ll learn from it” only the thing is a girl. Gross.

Oh, and the thing Celeste Ng wants James and Marilyn Lee to learn? Is how to talk to each other. Honest to God, I don’t understand how an interracial couple that deals with the bullshit they do just navigating 1970s America does not already know how to talk to each other. Like when Marilyn wants to get a job in order to use her intellect but James thinks she’s only doing it out of concern for their finances, so he tells her not to because he’ll make tenure (he’s a college professor) soon and she’s all “okay” but then quietly seethes. Bitch, tell him it’s not about the money! Tell him you’re bored out of your mind! There is zero reason for them not to have a discussion about this! And I’m supposed to believe that these two love each other deeply when they never talk about their problems. Fucking ridiculous. It also freaks me out that Ms Ng claims she grew more sympathetic to the parents as she wrote this book, not less, as she became a parent herself. As the Asian parent of interracial children, I find this appalling. James and Marilyn are self-absorbed assholes. I’m just happy that Nath at least will perhaps literally escape their orbit.

Anyway, the prose is quite readable even if the plot veers between unbelievable and insultingly ludicrous. It’s very much MFA writing, as someone more clever than I pointed out. Technically proficient but kinda like if Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections and Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones somehow managed to have a half-Asian baby. Some people will like that kind of thing, I guess. I did not, tho at least Ms Ng is a better writer than Mr Franzen and Ms Sebold, particularly when it came to describing the children’s interior lives.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2018/04/28/everything-i-never-told-you-by-celeste-ng/